


Teach Me Your Tongue

by SatiricalDraperies



Category: Strange the Dreamer Series - Laini Taylor
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Lazlo and Tzara are bros, Learning languages, Pre-Relationship, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 17:00:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17922782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SatiricalDraperies/pseuds/SatiricalDraperies
Summary: “It’s just a story,” she says. “Not even a true one,”“Yes, but it’sCalixte’sstory,”“What’s that got to do with anything?”in which Calixte wants to learn Tzara's language, Tzara wants to learn Calixte's language, and Lazlo's the only one who knows what'sreallygoing on





	Teach Me Your Tongue

The small one approaches her. Tzara’s seen her around the other _farangi_. Feisty and quick. Calixte. The girl who climbs things.

“What...you want?” Tzara twists her tongue around the unusual phonemes. The language of the _farangi_ is slippery and it flops around her mouth until the words come out upside down and wrong way up. 

Calixte grins. Her cheeks are round, like there are peach pits stuffed in the sides of her mouth. Her dark eyes are gleaming with mischief and her thick eyebrows are raised. Tzara wonders if this is her resting expression. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen her making any other face in all the long days they’ve spent travelling together.

“Teach me your tongue,” she says, her plump lips dancing around the sounds. Tzara envies the ease with which she speaks the lilting words.

“You want to learn...my language?” she asks.

“Yes,” Calixte nods.

“With me?” Tzara clarifies.

“Yes,” 

Calixte waits for her answer as Tzara ponders the request. It would be hard. She’s never taught anyone how to speak her language before. Why would she? She’s never met any of the _farangi_ , or even helped at the school, teaching the children how to properly fit their words together. She is a Tizerkane, a feared warrior, not some tutor! And yet Eril-Fane has told them to get to know the _farangi_. She will have to work with Calixte once they reach Weep, which will be much easier if they can understand one another. The answer, once she comes to it, is obvious.

“Yes,” she says, trying the syllable out. Calixte shouts an exclamation unknown to Tzara’s ears, but it sounds joyful. 

“And,” Tzara continues. Calixte twists her head and cocks it, her lips slightly apart and eyelids lowered. “You teach your language, also,”

Tzara studies Calixte carefully. Her eyebrows go up and her eyes widen, then Calixte’s lips tense and stretch across her entire face in a smile.

“It’s a deal,”

They shake on it. Calixte’s hands are just as callused as Tzara’s. Her fingers are wiry and her grip is strong. 

Tzara thinks they will like each other.

* * *

Three hours into this experiment, she’s beginning to question whether they might just end up hating each other instead. Calixte’s mouth is too soft and her tongue is not quick enough. Her trills don’t roll, and her plosives just sound breathy. 

It’s not much easier on her end, either. All of the _farangi_ vowels sound the same. Nothing is fully voiced, ever, and Tzara’s completely lost the ability to determine where one word ends and the next begins.

“I think we stop now,” she says, too tired to figure out what other words are needed. Why can’t the _farangi_ just say what they mean, instead of adding in so many articles? If there is only one candy, why say _a_ candy or _the_ candy or _that_ candy when it’s perfectly clear that they are talking about the only candy present? And if there is more than one, then they can be distinguished using words, not vague gestures and assumptions! 

Tzara is perhaps a bit mad because Ruza ate the last of the candy that the _farangi_ Thyon Nero brought. That doesn’t change the fact that he and Lazlo Strange seem to be having a lovely conversation across the camp. Even if Strange’s accent is, well, strange, at least he can make the proper sounds, which is more than Tzara can say for Calixte.

“Alright,” Calixte says brightly, despite the circumstances and Tzara’s barely veiled irritation, very clearly the woman who climbed the impossible building only to let herself be caught juggling invaluable jewels. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. I think we learned a lot today!”

Tzara watches as she practically skips away, an bounce in her step full of such abandon that Tzara hasn’t even seen amongst the children of Weep. She wonders what it is like to grow up with such lackadaisical freedom that even your steps may go unchecked. Oh what it must be like to be Calixte—to live without fear of consequence! Tzara can only wish to be possessed with that level of arrogance and assurance of immortality.

* * *

The _farangi_ are telling stories. Tzara can tell by the intent on their faces, cheeks pulled in and eyes angled up past the smoke of their fire towards the first stars of the night. She does not join their circle. The words _Weep_ and _Tizerkane_ are spoken enough that she knows she is not welcome. They are speaking as _farangi_ , not just as outsiders but as their own sovereign group, wondering about her and her people and her home. Tzara knows all too much about these things, but still she is drawn to their conversation, their half-whispered thoughts and dreams and hopes for what Weep will bring.

Tzara does not flatter herself into pretending that she knows enough of their language to understand what they are saying exactly, but she understands enough to know that it is far from the truth. She sits down anyways, hidden in the shadows, her back against a rock outcropping. 

Calixte’s voice rises up amongst the rest. “What about you, Ilfurth? What do you think is waiting for us in Weep?” 

Kae Ilfurth is the engineer, quiet and mathematical. His face shines as white as Calixte’s teeth in the flickering fire light. Tzara has never seen anyone with skin as pale as his. She wonders if he has spent his entire life inside, looking over blueprints and diagrams, or if he is sick with weak blood or some other invisible illness. 

She considers both options. She does not know which would be worse.

Ilfurth opens his mouth slightly, then closes it. He hesitates under the pressure. Tzara sympathizes with him. It is not an easy thing, to speak under the steady stares of others, but Tzara has found that any action taken is better than none at all, and she hopes for his sake that he will offer a story, or at the very least a joke or excuse, if only so that the moment will pass and he will emerge unscathed. 

“Well,” he says at last. “It’s not nearly as exciting as anything any of you have come up with, but my personal theory is either overpopulation, or some sort of natural disaster,”

“You’re right,” says Phathmus Mouzaive, a pretentious man who claims to be a scholar in the same way that children of famed generals claim to be soldiers. “It’s not as exciting,”

“Isn’t it though?” Calixte leans forward, her hands flying up as she begins to paint a picture of the Weep Ilfurth has theorized. “No one who sets out for Weep ever returns. Where are they? In Weep, of course!”

“Enjoying the show?” Lazlo sits down next to her. She notes, with some annoyance, that his accent has improved greatly and he could almost be mistaken for a native speaker. 

“What do you want, Strange?”

“Thought you might enjoy the company,” Tzara doesn’t deign to reply to him out loud, giving him all the answer he needs. She just purses her lips and raises both of her eyebrows before directing her attention back to the circle of _farangi_.

“And,” Calixte continues, her voice growing even more animated still, “as more and more people arrived and did not, could not, would not leave, Weep became like an overcrowded market! People kept building on top of each other, the buildings like layers of cake stacked on top of each other. But as the buildings grew higher, they started to twist and tip, turning so unpredictably that the streets became narrow passageways, winding tighter and tighter. The pressure of all of those cultures shoving against each other! The weight of all of those people pushing down! The tension of all of those lost explorers pulled together from across the entire world! Weep grew and grew until it could not grow anymore and then,” she stills her body suddenly, lowers her voice, holds back the tides of well-built suspense. “The city of Weep erupted.”

Not even Phathmus Mouzaive dares to move while Calixte is spinning her tale. The fire is crackling and the wind is whistling and Tzara’s heart is beating.

“The people were scattered throughout the desert. Their home had imploded in on itself, no longer a living, breathing thing but a colorful wreck of cloth and wood and brick, completely devoid of anything remotely resembling comfort. Everything was lost. _Everything_. 

“Anarchy broke out in the madness as people fought to find any semblance of normality. Anyone could’ve told you that Weep was gone, destroyed forever. But then, amidst all the chaos, a new force emerged. The Tizerkane, ancient warriors of legend. The survivors of Weep flocked to them, with their thick limbs and broad shoulders and fierce spirits, and there was hope once more.”

“That’s you,” Lazlo says softly in the interim as Calixte holds her audience captive. He nudges Tzara when she doesn’t immediately reply.

“What?”

“Broad shoulders and fierce spirits,” he says with a smile. “That is you, right?”

She rolls her eyes, trying to not care, but a blush comes unbidden to her cheeks anyways. Thankfully it is dark out, so Lazlo can’t see. He seems to be a decent fellow, but she knows that if Ruza catches wind of this he’ll never let her live it down. Tzara, blushing at a _farangi_. Unheard of.

“It’s just a story,” she says. “Not even a true one,”

“Yes, but it’s _Calixte’s_ story,” 

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

Lazlo just smiles again and turns to look back at the _farangi_ where Calixte is finishing up her story.

“But not even the Tizerkane, strongest and bravest of them all, could restore Weep. They could only hold it together until a new group of unconventional heroes was formed - that’s us, by the way,” she interjects. “And now we’re going to rebuild Weep to be even more magnificent! Does that make overpopulation exciting enough for you, Mouzaive?”

“Quite,” he says, sounding amused. “But then why are _you_ here? They’d want people to build a city, not climb all over it,” 

“Must be for my devastatingly good looks!” she quips back. Even Mouzaive and Ilfurth join in the laughter as she strikes a pose, her limbs thrown erratically and her face remade into some inexplicable visage.

“Look at her,” Lazlo says knowingly, shaking his head. “She really does have some kind of gift,”

“For modeling?” Tzara asks doubtfully. “You people have some odd ideas of beauty,” She may understand most of the words, but without the cultural background she knows that she misses out on most of the context. Still, she doubts that Lazlo is talking about Calixte’s physical appeal.

“No,” he laughs. “For bringing people together,”

Tzara watches as Calixte walks around, wishing each and every one of them a good night, before unwrapping her own bedroll. She’s beginning to realize that Lazlo is more perceptive than she previously thought, and reminds herself to make an effort to get to know him better before she drifts off to sleep herself, her mind still full of Calixte’s voice and the vision of the stars above her.

* * *

“So when do we get to the exciting part?”

“What?” Tzara is taken aback. 

“You know,” Calixte says absentmindedly, picking at a loose thread on her shirt. “Not just learning phrases or words on their own. How do I make them dance?’

“Dance?” And here Tzara was, thinking that she was finally learning the _farangi_ ’s metaphors when Calixte had to go and say something like that. She’d have to ask Lazlo about any more odd phrases she ought to know when dealing with Calixte, who tosses words around like the objects she juggles: completely at random with no connection whatsoever, but in such a fascinating way that Tzara can’t help but to stop and watch, or in this case, listen. 

“You do dance, right?” Calixte sounds incredulous. “When you’re not fighting?”

“What do you mean, _dance_? I do not know what you mean. I am a strong and brave Tizerkane, Calixte! We do not build our strong limbs and broad shoulders by _dancing_!” Tzara laughs, to let Calixte know she is joking, but Calixte’s face freezes anyways.

Tzara nudges her shoulder. “I joke, Calixte. We do dance.”

“Why did you use those specific phrases?” And now Calixte is not carefree or playful, but she chooses her words carefully, like foot holds on a building to be scaled. Tzara wonders what she did wrong, then remembers where she heard those words. _Who_ she heard them from.

Calixte may love telling stories, but Tzara knows that she does not want to be told one, not here, not now.

“Your words dance,” she says, finally.

“Thank you,” Calixte says clumsily after a pause, in Tzara’s own language. She lets out a sigh of relief that Calixte has accepted her explanation, her confession.

“Your pronunciation has improved,” Tzara notes, nodding her head slightly.

“Thank you,” Calixte says again, but this time the corner of her mouth lifts. It is not mischievous, as Calixte’s smirks so often are, but genuine and apparent. Tzara’s mouth subconsciously mirrors it.

“Let me show you how to dance with my words,” she says. “And maybe one day we will dance with both of our words together.”

“I would like that,” Calixte says. “I would like that very much.”


End file.
